


What use is there for tarnished steel?

by crownofthornsandroses



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Brainwashing, Canon Divergence, M/M, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Torture, Unhappy Ending, aliterative attack, assisted suicide? oops, doom and gloom, heavy handed metaphor overkill, steve and bucky fall together, there is brief gore but it is nasty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1865319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownofthornsandroses/pseuds/crownofthornsandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are disturbed human souls pinned to glitching machines.</p><p>Steve and Bucky fell together. The Winter Captain and Winter Soldier are relentless, vicious, and doomed. When they remember, it's too much to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What use is there for tarnished steel?

 

> **_“That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight, I’m following him.”_ **

Of course it had just been teasing on the surface, but Bucky was also reminding Steve that he remembered that kid, always would. That skinny Steve Rogers had only landed himself a different physique, more fitting perhaps, to contain his brave soul. Yes he _said_ he was fighting for Steve because of who he had been, but it was more that Captain America was nothing without Stevie’s innate goodness against all odds, than that he actually resented the apparent change in his friend.

So it was no question at all that he would stand between Steve and harm’s way, be he delicate boy Buck ’d grown up with or the national icon he’d become. Through thick and thin, and all that. It was still Steve, always would be. His Steve.

Taking a moment to steel himself, he seized the fallen shield and sprung up to block whichever Hydra scumbag was approaching. If he could only buy a moment, enough for Steve to get back on his feet, it would be enough. The mission be damned, Steve was what he fought for, Steve was who he would die for – imminently, he had no illusions as to that. And Steve was worth it.

Steve had barely registered the gaping opening in the side of the speeding train, its damaged rattling merging with the pounding of his heart in his mouth as Bucky was blasted out into the swirling cold. Not so much as looking where he threw the shield, though a thunk would have told him it made contact, Steve flung himself outside. By some miracle, Bucky was gripping the twisted metal. Sliding along, closer and closer, just about in reach, almost safe, Steve extended a hand to haul him back when something began to snap. It wasn’t even a conscious choice that in the split-second the brunette began to fall, Steve lunged forward, grabbing his hand, and in doing so completely releasing any hold on the train. As they plummeted down, towards the iced and jagged jaws of the mountain, Steve knew that with all the thought in the world he would have done exactly the same.

*

Bucky was found first. The shattered bodies, frozen together, had seemed as one so entwined they were. The blanketing snows dug away, the crowing at the American soldier, phenomenally still intact, was nothing to the glee when half buried beneath him lay Captain America himself. It had been death, oblivion, an eternity. It had been nothing, a dream. Wholeness. Still wrapped together in their cold and brittle sleep, it had been deemed best not to separate the pair; until they reached the lab. A small mercy, and one they would wish had been ignored. If only the fall had ended them. If only they had been snapped apart too soon, killing their stiff carcasses, and given release. Those initial wishes were burned away with their pride and they saw that, had they died, they would have been dragged back into the agony of what could barely be called living. Had they fled, they would have been hunted, caught, punished, as they learned with each fresh escape attempt. Hydra was inevitable. All roads led there.

Their minds snipped and sliced, wiped and deformed, mantra drummed in “obey, **obey, OBEY** ”. Their bodies carved and starved, strengthened, modified. Trained until killing was not a decision but a reflex. They had bargained desperately, not for themselves but for the other. The scientists had laughed, mocking the ‘touching’ spectacle, and redoubled their torture. They had to hope that a person’s essence cannot utterly be erased. It was the last hope they felt, before any feeling was blotted out by screams ripped from their own raw throats or worse from the other’s, though by then they hardly knew why that should be so.

*

 

When they were finished, ready, blank, there were missions. The first, to arrange the death of a Politian, was almost nondescript compared to many that would follow. As their hands were drenched in the blood - both metaphorically and literally - of those who opposed the party, again and again over the years, the memory of it was lost. However as they stood together and watched the mansion burn ( _cause an impression, the handlers said, let all of Russia know)_ it felt as though any scrap of blameless innocence left to them was disintegrating with the ashes in the breeze.

*

The Winter Captain and the Winter Soldier. The Captain and **his** Soldier. The Soldier and **his** Captain. The iron fists from behind the iron curtain. The crowning pride and glory of the red room. The weapon. Danger, destruction, death to those in their sights. Damaged, doomed, dead themselves. Winter.

The cold was rooted deep inside them, after the fall that neither wholly recalled but both saw flashes of from skyscraper vantage points, and during the long sleeps between each task. But nobody notices a ghost shiver in a heatwave. In his cryopod, the Captain dreams of the tale of a boy with a splinter of ice in his heart, somebody reading it to a sickly blond thing too weak to do anything but listen yet adoring through his pain the dark haired reader with the wild grin. The Soldier dreams of an older, strapping creature with the same grin moving blocks of imported ice at the docks to pay for the health and safety of his blue-eyed boy.

 _(make an example, the handlers said)_ They hung their victim from a tree in a public square.

 _(put him in line, the handlers said)_ They dismembered the man’s children and scattered them, a trail of gory breadcrumbs through his home, leading to his wife’s bound and mutilated body.

 _(keep it hidden, the handlers said)_ They entombed the target in cement. If the target had happened to be alive at the time, all the better.

The scientist whose brain was unwilling to work for their masters was decapitated. The visiting capitalist diplomat was shot at her welcoming ceremony. The agent who double-crossed was tracked down and executed. And the reputation of codename: ‘Winter’ grew.

*

They were inseparable, save for when partitioned into their glorified freezers to sleep for a month or a decade. Perhaps someone had tried, once upon a time.

 

> **_“No, not without you!”_ **

It clearly hadn’t been effective. To call them a couple would have been off the mark. They defended each other savagely, felt each other’s wounds, were each other. Complementary counterparts to a single deadly unit, as if they had lived that way forever. Sometimes they remembered that they had. Then the thoughts would be purged from them, until they were left with a bond that nobody could sever, and nobody could explain.

Fighting together back to back, a perfect marriage of skills; or sparring with each other at the base, they danced and hit and countered in fluid synchronisation. On one occasion, the Soldier had been overwhelmed by the sight of swaying couples in outdated clothes, the sound of swelling jazz music, invisible and indistinct yet sharper than the crisp snow in the practice yard. The urge to twirl his Captain into his arms had been too powerful to resist, and they had truly danced, in the bitter cold and the stunned silence of their inferiors, of their masters. Until the Soldier was dragged to the electroshock machine. They didn’t try it again. Yet the need remained, tingling under his skin like the residual electricity in his metal arm.

*

Coinciding with the height of the cold war, war, war meant khaki green and dancing monkeys to the Captain, was the peak of their stability. Or so somebody thought, in any case. They were used to prepare agents for the motherland subsequent to successful missions. All of their missions were successful then. Most trainees blurred into a series of unmemorably serviceable outcomes. Some they later had to dispose of. One, a red haired girl, they nearly cared about. _(caring is forbidden. You belong to another anyway)_ What they felt for one another other went far deeper than ‘caring’ covered. When she got free, it was almost like joy, or an echo of it. With a tinge of envy.

*

Then, the deterioration began.

They slept for longer, and were used less for _effectiveness_ and more for _effect_ , the myth surrounding them as fearsome as ever. It wasn’t that they failed _(never fail, fail and Steve will be hurt, Bucky will be hurt. Who were they? Who are they? They must surely be dead and gone already. Why do you care? It is terrifying. Anything you care for will be broken, stolen. Wiped)_. They became erratic. And their ferocity increased.

*

They changed hands, stopped being wiped; memories which had been scourged away beginning to accumulate. It was lax of their masters, and the Captain and the Soldier were well aware. And they use it, something buried for 70 years stirring in both of them despite everything.

*

The mechanical clicking of the chamber moving forward, the hiss as it’s door springs open and the frosty air inside meets that of the harshly lit room, the occupant stepping out. The Captain _(Steve, Steve, what have they made you?)_ looks about, instantly alert as is always the way, though he hardly knows what _(who)_ he looks for. Then comes the sound of the twin chamber’s opening, his heightened hearing picking it up almost before it happens, and he knows. The Soldier _(Bucky?)_ emerges as from a chrysalis, his eyes roving as the Captain’s did, until they meet. The Captain can feel their gaze resonating deep inside him somewhere, and knows it is the same for the other. His other half. The time has come.

They hadn’t discussed it, talking being too tangible, too easily ripped away by programming _(suffering)_ , but communication through looks alone had always been enough for them, since they were human, since before the war, since they had first felt that connection between them in another city and another time, long lost to them now. The Soldier has found the word _(soulmates)_ his old self scoffing at it while knowing its truth, his new self _(still young yet older than he should ever have been, than either of them should have been)_ knowing nothing but its truth.

They are sent to America. The way the handlers talk, in briefing them and when they think Winter is not listening _(what are they, after all; not people anymore)_ tells them that this is some kind of ‘fuck you’ to the States, that this moment has been saved for maximum impact, and that they are not intended to return.

This is confirmed when they are flown over in a private jet, given no passports, no money. The Captain and the Solider restraining themselves from physical contact beyond the brush of their thighs, the surreptitious clasp of their hands together as they gaze down into the ocean _(cold)_ below.

Landing, disappearing from the handlers, when out of sight it is impossible to say who clings to the other first. They have been entombed in ice together, died together, twisted and abused together, massacred traitors and innocents together. And they will escape together. The Soldier grabs the Captain’s hair, soft and golden _(like his heart is, was)_ and twines it round his silver fingers. He forces their mouths together, aggressively, or is it passionately? They are the same thing to them now, biting and sucking and licking until their mouths are raw and burning. Last time they were in this country, this was illegal. Is it still? They find they do not care. Who could beat them anyway?

The bases are easy to find, dotted about the country, most of them insinuated within the self-righteous S.H.E.I.L.D organisation. Necks are snapped like twigs broken off a thornbush. So few resist them that they take to seeking confrontation during their ambushes, give the agents a chance to fight. No-one comes close to having a chance. The corpses on the floor do not rise, double-headed, to confront the corpses that put them there. If the good are massacred along with the traitorous, well, it will tell that the Captain and the Soldier are not doing this for _them._ For anyone.

They move on swiftly, but the trail of destruction they leave is easily traced. Nonetheless, they are not interrupted on this last, personal crusade of their own choosing.

They have never been sent to this city, yet it feels like a return. It does not ring true. They wind up cradled in each other’s arms on a bench, unable to rid themselves of the feeling of disconnect. Once they draw apart _(not far, never far again, never take you from me)_ they see it. And once they see it, they cannot avoid it.

They enter the museum through a back fire escape, disabling the crude alarm with ease. It is bustling with children and staff and just so many _people_ that it would be disorientating were it not for the unmissable “CAPTAIN AMERICA EXHIBITION” signs directing them. Striding in unison, their predatory aura parting the throng, they round a last corner and.

They have bought themselves to an arsenal of hurt worse than Hydra, or the Soviets, or any other masters, could ever envisage. At every turn a new trigger, a remainder of purity long cleaved out of them, a taunting memory. Running through the streets of Brooklyn, hand in hand – kids could get away with that, oh they would miss those days. The stab in the gut at seeing the skin-and-bones kid cornered by whichever twerp he had objected to _(never without crazy, noble reason)_. The frustration at not being able to fight your own fights, never being taken seriously thanks to your pathetic body _(except where he was concerned, he always took you seriously)._ The desperation to be accepted for enlistment, to fight with him. The matching desperation that he would never be accepted to fight. Pain of separation. Mingling pain and pleasure of reunion. Peggy, and the Howling Commandos _(would be ashamed)._ Love. Death. This tribute to the dead men that they once were lacerates their butchered minds, seeing in every smiling photograph on the walls the loathing they would have for what they have become. They have been bent, reforged and used by the will of others, yet it is their own selves which finally break them. _(The Winter Captain, Captain America, Steven Grant Rogers. Steve. The Winter Soldier, Sergeant, James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky)_

It is Steve, the Captain, the man whose very breath was once honourable, who crumbles first, and because they are one Bucky cannot help but follow. _(as if escape was possible. Fools.)_ The beast of tangled, sobbing, growling torment on the floor quickly clears the room of visitors. They are still clutching each other when they are tranquilised.

*

Natasha watches from behind the inches-thick glass of their cage. They never weep, the men who schooled her in death, for all that it might be easier for her to brush off. They are silent, then laughing maniacally, then shrieking, grasped tight together as ever they were, as the sounds of their euphoric, anguished insanity filter through her earpiece. The beings would be irreconcilable with that flawless duo were it not for their unmistakeable appearances. Their pallor, their tangled hair - dark, like the wood of the pine forests they were trained to hunt in, and yellow, too like the sun – and their muscular frames – that metal arm, that unnatural height, things neither seemed to expect for a moment before they buried the emotion, and their blue, glacial eyes. They are disturbed human souls pinned to glitching machines. When she leaves the observation room she already knows she will return, and what she will do then. There can be no doubt about the conclusion of their tragic, unhinged, wreck of a tale.

 

> **_“I’m with you till the end of the line.”_ **

She would have done it herself. She knew she wouldn’t need to. The Black Widow may not yet be fully trustworthy in the eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D, but her loyalty to those she cares for is unshakeable enough to risk the tenuous relationship. The car keys, the map, the pair of pistols (even super-soldiers cannot survive a headshot, and kinder to let them go simultaneously) are not things she will regret giving them, as she shuts down the security keeping them trapped. Here only interrogations, and lastly being put down, wait in store. They will hurt nobody but themselves, and they are beyond that anyway in any meaningful sense. She hopes they find a place where nobody will disturb the bodies. They deserve that dignity at least.

 

> **_“ with you"_ **

The car perches on the brink, dark water churning far below. Where they are they do not know, cannot care. They are far from civilisation, far from the road, have evaded cameras and delays. That is reassurance enough that they will be at peace, if they still have the right to such a thing. It seems fitting, the location. They have run from pain and from a fall, and found both. The scarred Soldier with the mismatched arms and his blond Captain, sick at heart, stare at each other. The scrawny hero and his cocky, charismatic ( _friend, brother, lover)_ … his everything, stare back. Beloved. Irreparable. A forgotten pledge rings in their ears _(the memories have been more real than reality for an eon)_. They suppose the end really came long ago, as they fell from the train on its track, from who they should have been on their own, intended course. This is merely their bodies' catching up. They lean into each other, crushing themselves together as if in a final effort to fuse into completeness. Without breaking their embrace, they raise the guns, tenderly pressing them to the other’s temple. As their metal coffin plunges forward and down, they fire.

 

> **_“end of the line.”_ **

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic. It's probably glaringly obvious.  
> If you thought things were picking up in the middle, I am so, so, sorry.


End file.
